Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Our anniversary

So we made a whole year of blogging, trying and not quite succeeding to post something new every day. Generally the mix as not been as good as it could have been, with perhaps less variety of voices than we aspired to and too many posts from me, but the mix is getting better, with more regular posts from Reuben, Toff, and Louise who we secured from Stroppyblog, just before the transfer window closed.

We are now getting quite lively comment on some threads, and an average of 200 or so readers per day, and it can be twice that if we post something particularly interesting.

Here are some of the highlights over the last year (this is a personal selection, and you may disagree):


On Basque terrorism:

We kept returning to the World cup, again and again.

On Fox hunting.

On racism:

I have posted a number of reports about me trip to Palestine, the best of which are about children in Bethlehem, and the settlers in Hebron.

We have had some debate about the ban on Smoking, and again:

BadMatthew posted an interesting report about the SWP’s Marxism event and disussed it beforehand as well.

We covered some rarely reported topics, such as slavery in Britain, and there was a report of the excellent Tolpuddle rally.

The English left largely failed to grasp what was going on in Scotland with the Sheridan court case, so I posted several times to explain the significance the perjury by Sheridan’s supporters.

The advantage of a blog is that you can also use it to develop your own ideas, and I am still coming to terms with the legacy that the left groups have on the socialist movement.

8 comments:

Salman Shaheen said...

And let's not forget what was surely the most important event of the year:

http://socialistunity.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-am-on-weakest-link-goodbye.html

Anonymous said...

Sheridan has since been a non person for Soacialist Worker.
After Bambery made twat of himself by publishing the Galloway forgery story (when Galloway knew the Oil documents were genuine) theres a silence since the Tam tapes appeared.

AN said...

Anonymous - what you say is clearly wrong. Sheridan wrote an article in Socialist Worker just two weeks ago:

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=10445

And while I am as Galloway-sceptical as the next man, I don't think the docs published by the Telegraph were genuine

Anonymous said...

George knows they are,he had them examined by Oliver Thorne and his lawyers told him he must never use the word forged to describe them.

The Sentinel said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Martin Wisse said...

Congrats on the anniversary. I've not always agreed with you, but on the whole this is a good addition to (still too small) field of socialist blogging.

AN said...

Thanks for the kind words Martin, and hey, it would be a dull world if we all agreed.

The Sentinel said...

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A GOOD LOOKING MARXIST?


Andrew Newman, or 'an' by his Socialist unity blog alias, is one of the prime examples of the marxist threat we face in this country.


A short, fat gormless, bespectacled, grandad-jumper-wearing, scruffy menace.


His public actions aside, just from the that photo above, I can see why he is so full of hate for us all; hate for a society that never fully accepted him when he was a child. Hate for a society that left him with feelings of inadequacy. Hate for a world that left him with mere scraps of romance, the last offerings no one else wanted. Hate for the status quo.


Life is so much better for unfortunates like this man when they can find people that appear to have an even lower status in society then themselves.


It serves a multifaceted, deep-rooted need within their psyche to become the defenders of the underdog. The new underdog that they have helped to create, in order to elevate their own perceived position.


Any creed that will allow them to exercise their revenge on the society that rejected them, or the world at large is fully embraced.
As the 'right' do not generally appear to welcome such obvious runts like this one, and besides unconcealed authority scares them, it has to be the 'left' that they fall for.


As the empty rhetoric of brotherhood, fraternity and equality play into this angry man's mind he burrows further and further into the 'left' until he sits as close to the wall as he can.


At last he has found a home where all the pent up rage, all the bitterness and all the contempt that burns a hole in him is actually a deemed a positive.


The more he calls for society to be destroyed the more he is applauded. He can even come out of it looking like a hero.


Uncontrolled immigration for our global brothers and sisters! Marriage for homosexuals! No more prison for criminals! ...and all of the other insane mantras.
Of course, the recipients of such insane generosity will be most grateful, but only for a short time, so the campaign must go on.


Because the treacherous band of incompetents and thieves that pass for our government are largely composed of people cut from the same cloth as this man, these goals have been taken on as official policy.


But they do not go far enough for the likes of Andy Newman, the man who's life now revolves around this self-empowering game of politics. The movement that gave him a sense of belonging, a sense of worth and a reason to live cannot end, not even in victory. All of his struts in life would be swept away if it did.


No, the fight must continue with even more radical ideas, even more extreme actions.Of course he knows that the real by product of all of this folly is the complete destruction of the country he grew up in, but that is the whole unsaid point.


Of course he knows that 'rights' for ethnic groups and homosexuals really means the stripping of rights for Britons and productive citizens. But they deserve it.


Of course he knows that unpunished criminals commit more extreme crimes. But after all, if people are more afraid of what might happen on the way home from work then what the treacherous parasites that have wormed their way into power are doing, then that policy will have served its purpose.


The whole game is attack; attacking our values, our morals, our laws and our way of life until we collapse in confusion and exhaustion.


"Between 1995 and 1997, Andy Newman led a successful campaign against the deportation of Mumtaz Begum, a grandmother who lived in Broad Street. The campaign won because it was able to win support right across the community, and also because it was prepared to defend Mumtaz by any means necessary. Andy Newman explains: "Justice sometimes means you have to break the rules, we didn't comply with the deportation order, and we were able to get widespread support for that position across Swindon."


Sums up all of the elements I have described here perfectly.


Why on earth, in all reality, would a normal middle aged man from Swindon feel the overwhelming compulsion to campaign for a woman who lied to customs to enter our country on a visitors visa and deliberately stayed for years, showing complete contempt for our laws and all of us in general. If she had a legitimate reason to stay she could have applied for a legitimate visa.


But this is like the milk of the god's for this man and his ilk! A chance to display his complete hatred for us all, erode our system and purport himself as a hero!


"On the day of the threatened deportation we organised a picket of the family's home including the mayor and the leader of the council (Labour in those days). We made it clear we would defend Mumtaz by "any means necessary", and she was hidden by the local Islamic community. So we organised and supported self defence by the family and their religious community. However the political context for that was solidarity based upon compassion. We managed to create a supportive atmosphere, where no public voice was raised in the town in favour of deportation. At one stage we even had a Jazz band play at a benefit for the family that included US servicemen from nearby RAF Fairford! We held out for 3 years until the government changed, and the incoming Labour government overturned the deportation order on compassionate grounds."


Source

You can feel the smug and gloating tone of this whole statement. It is almost tangible.


This wasn't about her it at all; it was all about him and his feelings of esteem and ego.


As for 'hiding her amongst the muslim community' besides the fact that he should have been charged with obstruction, this is a man who now seeks to deny islamic terrorism as a reality or the possibility that we could have many, many dangerous muslims in our country today, hidden out of sight.
It is distinct possibility that this man's action established a network of safe house within the muslim wards that are being used today to that end; at the very least he helped to consolidate an already existing network.

One capable of hiding someone for three years.


Of course double speak is the main tool employed by the marxists in their quest for destruction.


'Rights' actually means restricting the rights of the majority. 'Equality' actually means inequality for the majority. 'Respect' actually means contempt for the majority and 'tolerance' actually means intolerance for the rest of us.


It is a nasty, corrosive, warped and perverted form of politics that is practised by men such as Andy Newman (race and Equality Officer for the GMB union) and has pervaded, not just our society, but most of the western world's.


How?


Primarily because most ordinary decent people have no interest in playing politics everyday, attending every union meeting or devoting their waking lives to committee meetings.


But it is the life blood of the social inadequate like this one.


The fact that it disgusts and angers people, and after provocation's made, it fails to sink into this very twisted man that his behaviour may have actually consequences and he screams out in anger when someone publishes his address on the internet.


"If it was just me who was affected, I would not be worried at all, but I have a family ­I have a four-year-old and a baby of three weeks" he cries.


Source


So do most of us you fool, but you and your cronies are putting them all at serious risk and ruining their lives with your subversive actions.


Maybe that is the lesson you were being taught.